LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — Halloween is only a few days away, and soon the streets will be filled with dragons, mermaids and wizards. 

But as meteorologist Kendall Wilson tells us, more often than not the weather can also add its own chilling element for Halloween night.

Halloween is only six days away and whether you have kids planning on trick-or-treating as superheroes, princesses, or monsters, you’re going to need to know if the weather will cooperate. But unfortunately, when we take a look back at the climate trends for Oct. 31 in Mid-Michigan, we can see a very spooky trend.   

Eight out of the past 10 years, we have seen rain on Halloween, with a record amount of rain being set back in 2013 — when around 1.46 inches fell in the Lansing area.

But that’s just the trend for the past 10 years. Overall, for Halloween there is only a 47% chance that we see rain, and at this point, we are just talking about a few sprinkles amounting to around one-hundredth of an inch. That potential for rainfall will sharply decrease when we consider the chance for rainfall totals near 1/10 of an inch, and we only have a 4% chance of seeing half an inch of rain on Halloween night, based on past conditions.   

But most would argue that it’s not the rain that we typically see on Halloween that is the issue, it’s more so the temperatures. On average, this is the time where we see our overnight lows drop down into the upper-30s. And it looks like the forecast for this year has overnight lows even cooler than that.  

Normally when that happens instead of thinking about the potential for rain, we have to think about the chance for snow. No, it’s not completely out of the question. We actually have seen a trace amount of snow, on this date, back in 2014 and 2017, and as much as eight-tenths of an inch of snow back in 2019. But overall, based on climate averages, there is only a 2% chance of seeing snow on Halloween. But even though it is unlikely, the chance is still there.  

So, if you haven’t already thought of it, you might want to think of a few creative ways to add a nice warm sweater or even a winter jacket to that Halloween costume for this year.